I wrote at the start of the year about my parlous experience with the British tax and student loan authorities, whilst resulted in me being on the hook for several thousands of pounds in the previous tax year. My goal is to reclaim almost every single penny of that…

…but the bastards won’t make it easy.

April ¶

I checked on my HMRC account and saw that I had a tax credit to claim. That netted me £3,020.82 back; but what was it for? Based on the number I guessed it must be either the predicted 2025–26 payments or the miscalculated 2024–25 payments, plus a little bit of interest in either case.

I called SLC and got a self-describedly nosy Scottish lady who poked around in my account and said that SLC had told HMRC what they needed to, so I should contact HMRC instead.

I called HMRC, where I got a women who sounded like she was falling asleep; she responded to several questions with prolonged silences. I asked her to clarify which of the three corrections the HMRC repayment I had received was for and she said it was my 2024–25 tax return amendment (which I had previously been told wasn’t scheduled to be processed until November). When I asked whether they had received the student loan repayment information from the SLC, she passed me on to the HMRC student loan team, who told me to contact SLC about them. I reiterated they had sent me here, so she put me on hold whilst she called them; however, I think she pressed the wrong button as I was instead transferred to a rather confused man called Steven who promptly hung up on me.

I called back, got reconnected to the same agent and was told that SLC had passed on the information incorrectly when I had asked them before and that they in fact need to send me a letter to sign, granting them the authority to send an email to HMRC. She also clarified that the credit I had recevied was actually for my predicted 2025–26 tax return, and that my amended previous year return was still in their queue to process.

I called SLC again and politely explained their fuckup to them. The agent initially denied that they had done anything incorrectly and I spent a while on hold whilst she spoke to their finance department; upon her eventual return, she conceded that they had in fact messed up and that they would send me an email to request my permission to contact HMRC, which should arrive within five days.

In total, I wasted just over an hour and half on all of this, largely spent listening to tinny hold music or navigating (and re-navigating) inpenetrable phone mazes; I ended up writing down a map of the decision tree for each company so that I could more quickly return directly to the appropriate place, and at one point I accidentally took a wrong turn into student loan deductions which resulted in a recorded message that ended with you can hang up now. However, I didn’t hang up immediately and, after a short pause, got a putting you through; it made me feel like a cut-price Kevin Mitnick.

Four days later, I received the email from SLC, and I replied granting them permission to tell HMRC I had already made all of my student loan repayments from overseas.

Two days later, I received a letter from HMRC. First, they confirmed that the SLC had told them I had made repayments of £1,488 already, which they have credited to my tax account (though nothing ever appeared visibly in my account). But, given that they had originally charged me £2,323, that leaves £835 overpaid. Incredibly, they also tried to send me to a dodgy payday loan company, but that’s a story for another day.

May ¶

I claimed another tax credit, this time for £1,498.99; the credit for my already-paid student loan repayments, plus a little bit of early payment interest.

June ¶

I received, unannounced on June 16, an HMRC payment for £1,277.25 direct to my bank account. That number didn’t match up to any that I am still expecting, and the HMRC account would only say that it was somehow related to my payment.

Then, on June 23, I received a letter (dated June 12) informing me that they have now processed my amended tax return for the 2024–25 tax year. There is now no mention of any predicted payments for the 2025–26 tax year (good!), and they have now reduced my Income Tax due after tax reductions from £3,011.40 to £381.20 (which is fair enough!). But then, somehow, they managed to re-include my student loan repayments which now total £2,201:

Photo by the author

CUNTSSSSSS.

So I believe that the random repayment of £1,277.25 (or £1,264.20 without the interest) has been derived as follows:

But this still leaves £2,548.74 still in play (which is close enough to the £2,582.20 total stated on my amended tax calculation that I assume this is now the only number I need to care about), and I have no idea why the partial credit for my student loan repayments seems to have worked against me, but it seems that everything now seems to hinge entirely on these over- and double-paid student loan repayments.

But I pay whatever the SLC calculates as required for my income and country of residence, automatically via Direct Debit. So why are HMRC so adamant that I actually owe almost twice that?

I called HMRC again, and once again got suckered into going down the ‘student loan deductions’ route, which I know from experience is a dead end. In a moment of frustration, I discovered that saying ‘skip menu, talk to a human’ seems to override bypass the recorded voice—I’ve finally discovered a shibboleet! Then, as I was waiting in the interminable hell of the on-hold music, I thought I where I think the student loan numbers are coming from.

I have a Plan 2 Undergraduate Loan, plus a Postgraduate Loan. The former means I have to pay 9% of any annual income over the threshold of £29,385, whilst the latter takes 6% over £21,000. When the SLC ask for your income each year, you only have the option to put one income source, so I left out my small bits of irregular income from the UK. If I then calculate the student loan repayments based only on my French salary, I get a total around £1,600; so that will be the amount I got in credit once I finally got SLC and HMRC speaking to one another. But my remaining UK income was around £8,500, and—even ignoring the thresholds—15% of that is only £1,275. Even if I include the difference between my total French income and the taxable amount—£5,063—15% of that is only £2,027; nearly £200 less than they’ve charged.

But I noticed that the HMRC letter says they will tell the SLC about my repayments, but nothing appears within the (crap, barely functional) SLC portal. After an hour on the phone to HMRC (and being transferred between three different departments) I ended up with an Indian woman in the Student Loans department who did not understand what my issue was, complained about the call quality and said she would call me back to see if it improved; she eventually did and showed me where to find my repayments in the (unintuitive, obtuse) HMRC portal. She pointed out that I had received my £1,488 student loan credit on 6 May, and I was both in a hurry for an appointment and confused as to where the remaining unreimbursed money may have come from (given that my recalculated tax bill was only £381.20).

I realised I needed a chart:

As far as I can tell, HMRC were doing okay on reimbursing me right up until the long-delayed recalculation, where they seem to have correctly reduced my Income Tax due, but then expanded then amount of student loan repayments to maintain the existing balance, even through they had previously returned to me the bulk of this value. In short, HMRC have invented £1,366 out of thin air.

¡La lucha sigue!